Chapter 17
The next morning, I slip out before sunrise to visit the gym again. While I’m doing squats, Nate texts me to say he’s running errands, so thirty minutes later I return to an empty house and take my time showering.
While my conditioner sits, I check out Nate’s bath products.
According to the label on his half-full bottle of body wash, the fragrance notes in it are oak and bergamot.
His shampoo is the same. At least he’s not using the dispensers attached to the shower wall, because the products in there smell strongly of— ugh —gardenia.
Jolee’s signature scent, Go-Getter, was heavy on the gardenia.
My mom wore it as a perfume. She also lit the candles, set out bottles of the air freshener in our bathrooms, and kept me stocked with the body lotion.
Jolee had other fragrances too, like a citrusy one we had in reed diffuser form in the kitchen and a pillow spray I still blame for the headache I get every time I catch a whiff of lavender.
None of it smelled awful on its own, but I couldn’t escape it.
It wasn’t until I returned to my parents’ house for winter break my first year of college that I realized how overwhelming all the scents were.
By that point, Jolee was defunct, but Mom was still working her way through the boxes of inventory in the garage.
She tried until the bitter end, I’ll give her that, even though it was hard.
After I was born, my parents moved for Dad’s job, and she’d struggled, lonely and bored and not cut out to be a stay-at-home mom.
Once she found Jolee, which gave her a sense of purpose and a ready-made village of friends, she thrived.
Did she take it too far? Absolutely. But it was designed to suck in women like her, and I get why she found it appealing. Now more than ever.
How many times have I felt desperate for the same things she wanted: friendship and connection with other people?
I was lucky to find it when I met Bailey, and when she introduced me to everyone else.
I thought it would come easily when I went to CycleLove, but I screwed it up.
Michelle is the only friend I have at work who isn’t closer to Caleb than me, which means Michelle is the only friend I have.
When I get back to L.A., I have to start over. It’s a daunting task.
When I exit the bathroom, my skin is still damp under my clothes, and I smell something I do like: coffee. Nate is back.
“Morning.” He nods at the kitchen counter, where an oat milk latte and a smoothie with peanut butter wait for me.
“Thanks,” I say, surprised.
He eyes me over the top of his own coffee cup. “You look nice.”
I’m wearing bike shorts and a sweatshirt, and my wet hair is hanging over my shoulder in a sloppy braid. My cheeks are red from my workout and the hot shower. I narrow my eyes at him, trying to figure out why he’s buttering me up.
“What?” he asks.
“What’s going on?”
He laughs. “Nothing’s going on. Are you almost ready to go?”
I’m confused. Yesterday, things were weird. And now…“You’re being too nice.”
“I think you misheard me. I said you look terrible. Also, all these drinks are for me. It’s a long drive.”
Once we’re on the road, Denver quickly fades into long stretches of rural highway.
“Boring,” said the cashier at one of the shops I visited yesterday when I asked what this route was like, a direct line east to the college town of Lawrence, near the Missouri border.
But there is something beautiful about the expansive horizons, with wheat fields going on forever and clouds like brushstrokes overhead.
Nate’s grip on the steering wheel is loose, and I catch him tapping his thumb to the beat of the Lorde song playing from the speakers. I guess overnight he worked through the awkwardness between us. That should be a relief, but it rankles. I haven’t worked through it.
We’ve agreed to play a round of road trip bingo to determine which of us gets to challenge the other today.
Over the next few hours, as we cross eastern Colorado and the Kansas border, we check off squares when we spot tractors, cows, tow trucks.
We’ve each got a row of four squares crossed out, so the next few minutes are key, but I’m struggling to pay attention.
He unscrews the cap on a bottle of iced tea, and the muscles in his forearm flex the same way they did when he touched me two nights ago.
Jesus. I can’t get turned on by the way this man opens a Snapple.
Help , I text Michelle. I hooked up with Nate and it was amazing and I made it clear to him that I’d very much like to do it again even though it can’t go anywhere. Then I left the ball in his court and nothing’s happened since and I CAN’T HANDLE IT.
Michelle: NATE! Wait, why isn’t it going anywhere? Have you decided you can’t be in a relationship because of the new personality Tracy is drafting for you? Because that’s a terrible reason.
It’s hard to believe Tracy would actually discourage me from doing something that makes me happy, but she has dedicated a lot of time to my rebrand.
It wouldn’t be the most convenient thing for her to have to scrap it all because Single Girl Quinn isn’t single.
But this is all hypothetical. Nate and I have more tangible problems.
Quinn: For one thing, he’s moving back to NJ.
Michelle: And long-distance has already been ruled out?
It feels a little creepy to chat with Michelle about a serious relationship with Nate when he may not even want to make out again, but okay, sure.
Quinn: I’m trying to get more excited about my life in L.A., not less.
Michelle: Hmm. Well, I don’t know that hooking up with him again is going to help you meet that goal. But also, life is a slog interrupted by brief moments of joy, and this sounds like a joyful interruption. So.
Quinn: Wow. So inspirational. How is the slog, anyway?
Michelle: If Tracy comments one more time on the fact that I’m wearing a full-length shirt instead of a sports bra, I’m going to scream.
Quinn: She did it again?
Michelle: Every. Day. “Michelle in a tank top.” I’m so done with her.
Jeez. That’s not okay. I always chalked up Michelle’s dislike of Tracy to personality differences.
Tracy’s commanding, uncompromising energy probably comes off as domineering to someone like Michelle, who has decades of experience and once ran her own studio.
She doesn’t need a heavy hand. But I’m starting to realize Michelle may have a point.
Still, Michelle’s “I’m so done with her” gnaws at me. She can’t be serious. She wouldn’t leave CycleLove. No one who wants to be in the cycling business would leave a job like this voluntarily. But what else can she be thinking? We’re in Kansas by the time I give up on figuring it out.
“Bingo.” Nate points at a barn in the distance.
I pull the game back up on my phone to confirm. “Well, shit.”
“You made it pretty easy for me,” he says. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just work stuff.” He frowns, and I wedge my phone between my thighs. “What’s my punishment?”
He clucks his tongue. “Not punishment. Challenge. And your challenge is…to tell me everything you’d want to tell Tracy if you didn’t have to worry about her reaction. Until you see another item from your bingo sheet.”
My teeth grind as I clench my jaw. I don’t know why I agreed to play this game again. He knows all my sore spots.
I clear my throat. “I would tell her that I’m grateful for everything, and I know her job is hard.”
He cocks his head. “ Really? ”
“I’m warming up.” Contemplating his question makes my chest tighten and my skin itch.
I exhale. “Okay. I’d tell her I was hurt when she asked me to use the Caleb situation for content.
She knew I was struggling. She sent me on this trip.
She’s supposed to care. But she asked me to do something I didn’t want to, and she knew I’d say yes because I always do, and that feels shitty. ”
I tuck my foot under me and sit up straighter.
“I’d tell her Michelle thinks she creates a toxic workplace, and sometimes she makes it hard to argue with that.
It’s not even about Caleb anymore. I don’t care about him.
But I don’t feel good about what she wants me to do.
I mean, what about the woman with cancer? ”
Nate looks confused. “What woman with cancer?”
In halting words, I explain what Summer posted on my behalf. It sounds even worse when I say it out loud.
“That’s…wow.” Nate looks stunned.
“I deleted it as soon as I saw it, so maybe— hopefully —the woman didn’t see it.
It’s such an awful thing to say. Being supportive is one thing.
But spinning something like this into a positive is a slap in the face.
It makes me sick to think I’m responsible for making someone in that situation feel worse. Some things just suck.”
“Some things just suck,” he repeats. His eyebrows are raised meaningfully. It’s not the kind of thing I usually say out loud, but I’m at my limit here.
Every day, my work situation feels like it’s spinning out of control faster and faster.
By now, a week into this trip, I shouldn’t feel like this.
I need to be on my way back to the place, mentally, where I skip into the studio every day.
But I’m only getting further away, and this talking-to-Tracy game isn’t helping.
It’s just dredging up things I don’t know how to fix.
I try to breathe through the heavy weight on my chest. And then I see him.
“Religious billboard,” I say.
“Are you—”
“Religious billboard,” I repeat.
Jesus is here to save me.
No, seriously. It’s a square on my bingo sheet: religious billboards. This one is a painting of Jesus in a wheat field, surrounded by crops up to his chin so only his face is visible. There’s a rest stop just past it, so we pull in.